Head-in-the-Sand Liberals

[there buster]

TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.

This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.

This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

. . . .

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.

I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate.

. . . .

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

. . . .

Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

. . . .

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

the The rest is here.

[Dr. Shane]

A good article has been published by Popular Mechanics.

9/11: Debunking The Myths

Quote:

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

[bevin]

Hey, Shane and I both like Popular Mechanics - and it was a good article.

Unfortunately the head-in-the-sand conservatives are an even bigger problem than the liberals.

(a) You can't blame all the Muslims for the extremists, any more than you can the Christian for their extremists

( The Muslims are not upset by the USA lifestyle. That is a Bush lie. The Muslims are upset because the USA continuously messes in their countries politics and messes up their lives.

© There is nothing the USA can do to stop the Islamic countries getting nuclear bombs, intercontinental delivery vehicles, and various other WMD. We can postpone it a bit, but if the nett effect is end up with countries that are really annoyed with us owning nuclear bombs...

14,000 Islamic citizens are now in USA-controlled prisons, being held without knowing what they are accused of, being held without trial, being held without their families knowing where they are or if they are alive or dead.

The Bush administration is running Gulag's.

The conservatives really have their heads buried if they think this is going to end well.

/Bevin

[Naomi]

A good article has been published by Popular Mechanics.

9/11: Debunking The Myths

Quote:

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

Acts such as this which are conducted by cowards against innoncent are unacceptable, no matter what country they occur.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

(a) You can't blame all the Muslims for the extremists, any more than you can the Christian for their extremists

I agree. I see little difference between fundamental Muslims of today and mid-evil papists.

Quote:

The Muslims are not upset by the USA lifestyle. That is a Bush lie. The Muslims are upset because the USA continuously messes in their countries politics and messes up their lives.

I disagree. Fundamental Muslims have always been at war with their neighbors and sought to use the sword for evangelism. As technology has made the world smaller their violent methods have spread accross the globe.

Quote:

© There is nothing the USA can do to stop the Islamic countries getting nuclear bombs, intercontinental delivery vehicles, and various other WMD. We can postpone it a bit, but if the nett effect is end up with countries that are really annoyed with us owning nuclear bombs...

That is perhaps a sad reality which may mean nuclear war. Since fundamental Muslims are suicidal, once they get nuclear capabilities it is only a matter of time until they use them and we are forced to wipe them off the map.

God have mercy on us all.

[there buster]

Quote:

The Muslims are upset because the USA continuously messes in their countries politics and messes up their lives.

Yes, and they're upset when we don't. There's one constant here, "Muslims are upset." As the incomparable Bernard Lewis has pointed out, in his majesterial, "What Went Wrong," Muslims are stuck with a 7th century religion and a 7th century culture. The West is in the 21st century. Because they have a shame-based culture, they blame everyone but themselves for their problems.

This makes them sympathetic for Western socialists, because they also blame everyone else for their problems.

Quote:

14,000 Islamic citizens are now in USA-controlled prisons, being held without knowing what they are accused of, being held without trial, being held without their families knowing where they are or if they are alive or dead.

"Islamic citizens?" Since when did Islam become a nation? These poor folks were captured making war against the US. They were out of uniform, and thus, according to the Geneva Convention, could be shot as spies.

Quote:

The Bush administration is running Gulag's.

That statement doesn't even merit a reply. Read Solzhenitsyn. You'll discover what a real gulag is like.

[Nicodema]

Is all this cheerleading for the oppressive regime that has ruined our nation really necessary? I find it heinous and offensive.

Last I checked this was not the right-wing-nutjob cheerleader training camp. Can't we keep this kind of garbage out of C/A?

If anyone ELSE had posted the kind of statements that opened this thread, they would have been lambasted to you-know-where and back by the OP of this thread as engaging in vicious ad hominem.

I find the hypocrisy of this nearly as disgusting as the lies being perpetrated themselves.

[Nicodema]

The nonsense in the OP:

[Bravus]

I've just decided not to dignify it with a reply, ever (this reply is to Nico, not to the right-wing nonsense).

Remember:

[there buster]

Quote:

ad hominem.

I've posted the definition numerous times, but you keep misusing it. Ad Hominem doesn't mean something you disagree with, it means attacking the person rather than their ideas.

To say a person is "stupid" is ad hominem. To say that an argument is stupid is to imply an ad hominem, i. e., that the person is stupid. To say that an argument is "inchoherent" addresses only the content of the argument, not the intellect or character of the arguer. I understand the distinction is not natural to everyone, but long experience tells me that 6th graders can understand it quite well (I used to teach it to those in grades 5-9).

Of course, you can attach it to everything you don't like, but that just debases the language. Like Humpty-Dumpty, "Whenever I say a word, it means whatever I say it means," leads only to confusion. So let's stick with the dictionary definition.

[Nicodema]

Right, whenever it's applied to nonsense you agree with, it is no longer ad hominem. I understand perfectly.

I'm not the humpty dumpty here, darlin'.

But I've a far lovelier oeuvre for you to taste, should you ever tire of miring yourself in the stench pits of right wing nuttery.

Come see me sometime. ;-)